paint.net 4.1 Beta (Build 6808)

[Rick Brewster]

Please note that this is a BETA release of Paint.NET. If you are at all worried about crashes and potential data loss, then please do not install it. Also, it will expire in 12 weeks; an update will be available before then.

 

This build is not available via the built-in updater (mostly because it just takes a lot of time to get that thing hooked up). Edit: I've made this available via the built-in updater. You can get it by going to Settings -> Updates, making sure that "Also check for pre-release (beta) versions of paint.net" is enabled, and then clicking on the Check Now button.

 

 

Once the final release is available, it will be offered to you through the built-in updater. If you're using the Windows Store release, I'm sorry but this is not available just yet. Please be patient for the final release! I haven't yet looked into how to do beta flights, but it should be possible.

 

Direct download link: https://www.getpaint.net/files/zip/test/paint.net.4.100.6808.36224.install.zip

 

I've been hard at work on this for the last 7 months and it's finally time for a beta release! There's a lot of small- and medium-size things all over the place   There have been some significant performance improvements to some important effects, especially those in the Blur menu. There are also a lot of quality-of-life improvements, some great bug fixes, and the ability to perform copy and paste operations on the selection, among many other things. I've also been making a lot of improvements "under the hood" that won't really be visible, but that will make it easier and faster for me to make progress on features and other performance improvements.

 

Thanks to @BoltBait and @toe_head2001 for their contributions in this release! 

 

Here's a quick overview of some of the bigger changes:
 

• GPU-powered Effects! Some of the effects have been rewritten to use Direct2D's image processing system, and the results are phenomenal for performance. Gaussian Blur is actually fast now and no longer takes ages to complete for large images or radii, and the same goes for both Motion Blur and Radial Blur (although Radial Blur does currently need a pretty powerful GPU). A few other effects were converted for the sake of completeness and for my own learning, and there are two new ones (Morphology and Turbulence). This is where most of my time (the aforementioned "last 7 months") and sweat was spent: getting a GPU-based effect rendering system up and running end-to-end was no small feat! Expect to see more effects converted over to the GPU in subsequent updates as this tech matures. I am also planning to make the GPU available for plugins to use in a future update.
   
   
• Copy/Paste for Selections. You can now copy the active selection to the clipboard, as well as paste from the clipboard to the active selection (all selection combine modes are supported). This copies only the selection, not the pixels that are within the selection. You can then apply the selection to another layer or image, or just save it for later. Because the selection is copied to the clipboard as JSON text, you can use external utilities to maintain them or even do processing on them (you aren't limited to Paint.NET's built-in selection operations, in other words). For example: if you want to save and reuse 5 selections, just open up 5 copies of Notepad and use them as a storage buffer. You can also use Paste Selection when a regular image is on the clipboard: if the image is from Paint.NET, the embedded selection will be used, otherwise the image's size will be converted to a selection (a rectangle anchored to x=0,y=0 with the same width and height as the image). More formal documentation for the data format will be available soon.
  
   
• Bicubic resampling for the Move Selected Pixels tool. This can produce much higher quality results than Bilinear resampling. It is very CPU-intensive, so a fast CPU with 6+ cores is highly recommended if you plan to use it a lot. The default is still Bilinear, so if you'd prefer to always use Bicubic you can change it from Settings -> Tools.
  
   
• New +/- buttons for Tolerance and Hardness. This is a great quality-of-life improvement, especially for the Magic Wand when you're trying to find just the right value for Tolerance.
  

 

Change log since 4.0.21:

• Improved: Gaussian Blur, Motion Blur, and Radial Blur now render using the GPU and are significantly faster
• Changed: The following effects are now rendered using the GPU: Edge Detect, Pixelate, and Relief
• Changed: The following adjustments are now rendered using the GPU: Black & White, Invert Colors
• New Effect: Distort -> Morphology (uses the GPU)
• New Effect: Render -> Turbulence (uses the GPU)
• New: Bicubic resampling is now supported for the Move Selected Pixels tool. It is very CPU-intensive, so a CPU with 6 or more cores is highly recommended.
• New: Edit -> Copy Selection. This will copy the current selection's geometry to the clipboard as JSON text.
• New: Edit -> Paste Selection. This will apply the selection from the clipboard to the current selection. All 5 selection combine modes are supported.
• Changed: The Text tool now uses Points for font size measurement. You can also elect to use the old font size metric, "Fixed (96 DPI)" via the dropdown to the right of the font size.
• Fixed: The Text tool's recentering algorithm when typing reaches the edge of the viewport should be better
• New: Added +/- buttons to the Tolerance and Hardness sliders.
• Changed: Increased max zoom level to 6400%
• New: The mouse wheel may now be used to scroll a long menu, such as when a lot of effects are installed (thanks @toe_head2001!)
• Changed: For Windows 7 SP1 users, the Platform Update from 2013 is now required.
• Fixed: Opening certain large images and then zooming with the mouse wheel would sometimes result in the scroll position being completely wrong
• Changed: Hiding a layer no longer auto-selects the nearest visible layer. You can re-enable this in Settings
• New: For the Windows Store release, the paintdotnet: protocol can now be used to launch the app so that you can specify command-line parameters. For example, you can go to Start -> Run and type in paintdotnet:"path to file1.png" path_to_file_2.png and both images will be opened (even if Paint.NET is already open)
• New: Added Heptagon (7-sided polygon) and Octagon (8-sided polygon) shapes
• Fixed the high-DPI inset-text scaling for the Shape selector (e.g. Pentagon with an inset "5")
• New: Palettes are now also loaded from Documents/paint.net App Files/Palettes. This folder name is not localized, and so is easy to rely on for installation scripts.
• Fixed: View -> Pixel Grid will now correctly adjust to changes in the theme (light vs. dark)
• Fixed: The background color for the Tolerance slider has been corrected for non-dark themes
• Changed: Removed shortcut keys for all built-in Adjustments except for Invert Colors (Ctrl+Shift+I). This is being done to free up shortcut keys for other functionality.
• New: Added a shortcut key to trigger a full .NET garbage collection: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+` (tick/tilde). This should only ever be needed for troubleshooting purposes.
• New: Battery Saver Mode in Windows 10 is now respected, whether enabled manually or due to low battery. UI animations will be disabled.
• New for plugin developers: The IndirectUI Color Wheel control now supports an alpha slider. To use this, set the range (min/max values) of the Int32PropertyControl to [Int32.MinValue, Int32.MaxValue] (thanks @BoltBait!)
• New for plugin developers: there is a new FileChooser property control type for string properties (thanks @toe_head2001!)
• New for plugin developers: there is a new BinaryPixelOp.Apply(Surface, Surface, Surface, Rectangle) method overload (thanks @BoltBait!)
• Changed: The IndirectUI text control now has a vertical scroll bar when multiline mode is enabled (thanks @toe_head2001!)
• Fixed a very old and nasty crash, "InvalidOperationException: ScratchSurface already borrowed"

 

Enjoy! Please comment with your questions and bug reports

[Rick Brewster]

Please note that some of the updates to the translations were done via machine translation, and are not very good. If you'd like to help improve them, head over to https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/27847-official-translations-for-40-via-crowdinnet/ and make a post with your crowdin.net user name and which language you'd like to contribute to.

 

[BoltBait]

To the Plugin Authors:

 

I've wanted some new "toys" for us plugin authors for a long time.  In fact, I've been asking Rick to give us plugin authors some attention for YEARS. I'm assuming he got sick of me pestering him and so he gave me and toe_head2001 access to the official source code repository and suggested that we make the enhancements ourselves!  Well... we jumped in with both feet.  I can tell you--this is not an easy thing.  The Paint.NET source code is a HUGE and complicated beast.  But, we managed to figure out (with Rick's help) where to make some enhancements.  Now, toe_head2001 and I have updated CodeLab  to support these new toys.  Check it out here:

 

CodeLab 4.0 Beta for Paint.NET 4.1:  https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/113154-codelab-40-for-the-new-paintnet-41/

 

 

[chesscanoe]

Paint,net 4.100.6808.36224 beta : Distort  - Morphology  is a cool new option that 'improves' a wallpaper image I made in 4.0.21 . Thanks fo Rick for his ongoing persistence in improving and expanding function of paint.net. 

[xod]

Thank you for your hard work @Rick Brewster, @BoltBait and @toe_head2001.

[lynxster4]

Wow! I can't wait to get home and try this!

 

Loving your new avatar @Rick Brewster!  I have to admit that I watch the show...

[ReMake]

The Tools window is always on top of all windows for other applications.

 

[Rick Brewster]

Doesn't repro for me. There shouldn't have been changes to that code.

 

Does that always happen? Even after starting up the app and doing nothing else?

[ReMake]

This is strange, but today I can not reproduce it. Perhaps it was some random event. If this happens again, I will record the sequence of my actions.

[mottoman]

Shortcut keys (A or Shift+A) for selecting next or previous shape not working. 

[mottoman]

Also minimising to the taskbar and then reopening results in this happening :

 

This never happened prior to this build.

[Rick Brewster]

I've made this available through the built-in updater, which should make it a lot easier to get.

 

[Rick Brewster]

11 minutes ago, mottoman said:

Also minimising to the taskbar and then reopening results in this happening :

 

This never happened prior to this build.

 

I can't repro this either ? Anyone else?

 

This smells like a video driver issue. Can you go to Settings -> Diagnostics, and then click "Copy to Clipboard", and then paste that over here in a reply? (bonus points for putting in inside [ code ] tags)

[AndrewDavid]

59 minutes ago, mottoman said:

Shortcut keys (A or Shift+A) for selecting next or previous shape not working. 

Moving cursor to work area resolves this issue. While cursor is over shape choice dialogue nothing happens.

[mottoman]

20 hours ago, AndrewDavid said:

Moving cursor to work area resolves this issue. While cursor is over shape choice dialogue nothing happens.

Many thanks @AndrewDavid Works as expected now  

[mottoman]

20 hours ago, Rick Brewster said:

This smells like a video driver issue. Can you go to Settings -> Diagnostics, and then click "Copy to Clipboard", and then paste that over here in a reply? (bonus points for putting in inside [ code ] tags)

I will have to forsake the bonus points and attach a txt file. 
 

diagnostics.txt

[mottoman]

20 hours ago, welshblue said:

I can't repro any of the above bugs, but set the Paintbrush or Eraser to 16 and use the mouse scroll and it shoots up to 1600 whichever way you scroll.

Set it to anything with a six at the end eg. 26 - 36 etc etc and it shoots back to 1 using the scroll button

 

If I set the value to 16 and scroll the mouse, I can't reselect 16 as a value, it goes from 15 to 20 and then upwards in increments of 5's 

[Rick Brewster]

@mottoman "Intel(R) Iris(TM) Graphics 6100" ... I would check to make sure you've got the latest video card drivers. Intel's had some buggy drivers in the past, especially for older hardware.

[Rick Brewster]

The thing with "16" and the brush width isn't really a bug. The combo box control is just snapping to the block of text that closest matches what you typed. 16 is closest to 1600 in that sense. The mouse wheel isn't meant to be used for "increase / decrease". That's just not how this part of the UI works (which isn't to say it wouldn't be a good improvement...).

[mottoman]

12 minutes ago, Rick Brewster said:

@mottoman "Intel(R) Iris(TM) Graphics 6100" ... I would check to make sure you've got the latest video card drivers. Intel's had some buggy drivers in the past, especially for older hardware.

Thanks for the reply, although my laptop is not exactly old (18 month I believe)

[toe_head2001]

4 minutes ago, mottoman said:

Thanks for the reply, although my laptop is not exactly old (18 month I believe)

 

The laptop itself may be 18 months old, but the Intel chip in it is more than 3 years old.

(You can also find up-to-date graphics drivers on that linked page)

 

[mottoman]

15 minutes ago, toe_head2001 said:

 

The laptop itself may be 18 months old, but the Intel chip in it is more than 3 years old.

(You can also find up-to-date graphics drivers on that linked page)

 

Many thanks, checked for updated drivers, driver updated and issue now fixed. ?

[Rick Brewster]

"old" in this case was mostly about the drivers

 

Glad it's working!

[mottoman]

26 minutes ago, Rick Brewster said:

"old" in this case was mostly about the drivers

 

Glad it's working!

Once again, thanks for diagnosing the diagnostics, I should remind myself to check for updates driver wise every now and then. I always assume windows update handles everything and of course that's not the case.  

[skyoxZ]

On 8/24/2018 at 8:24 AM, Rick Brewster said:

Please note that some of the updates to the translations were done via machine translation, and are not very good. If you'd like to help improve them, head over to https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/27847-official-translations-for-40-via-crowdinnet/ and make a post with your crowdin.net user name and which language you'd like to contribute to.

 

It would be great if there's a filter for me to find all approved 0-vote translations not translated by me. Any suggestion?

 

ps: Sorry for downvoting your translations. I was trying using "Need to be voted" filter, but it seems not practical.

Edited August 29, 2018 by skyoxZ